Taking it down, and putting it back up again

Wallpaper. That may be the one word that described our house when we moved it. There was wallpaper EVERYWHERE. Most of it was ugly, most of it was old, and generally there were at least 3 layers of it.

With my trusty yard sprayer, I doused the walls in the house with vinegar and hot water and then simply waited for it to start loosening up. Then scrape, scrape, scrape. The piles of wallpaper generally looked like this:

Some walls were easier than others. Most were really sucky, though. I was at my worst while I was removing wallpaper. It didn't take much skill, just a lot of patience. It always seemed like it would never end.

After all of the spraying and scraping, I thought for a bit that I would never put up wallpaper. Well...then I started looking at design magazines and fell in love with the idea of at least one wall, somewhere. After searching through samples, I found the beauty that would be in our master bedroom. I was told it was as simple as spraying a light misting of water on the back of it and then hanging it. Uh, yeah right.

Putting up the wallpaper was just about as bad and taking it down. Actually worse, because I had put money into it. After two days of cutting, measuring and attempting to be spacially-inclined, I nearly ripped my hair out.

This image is what happens when you follow the directions of the manufacturer. After this panel fell down on Sean and my head in the middle of the night, I decided to just actually use wallpaper paste. That was a good decision.

Two days of aggravation led to probably my favorite space in our new house: our master bedroom.

My iPhone does not do the colors justice, so I'll replace these photos soon with some from a better camera, but the wall color is really great (if I do say so myself). It's a color called "weimaraner" from Benjamin Moore's Aura collection. It really does look like a weimaraner with a grey-silver look to it, depending on the light. The silver and cream of the wallpaper (by Echo Designs) is a great match.

Here are a few more pics.

I love the flokati rug we got to accompany our new king-size bed (which actually is my very favorite thing about our new house - how did we ever get by in a Queen bed for so many years?).

And I love this photo of my mom when she was young, riding her horse in Colorado. She looks like a little Mexican cowgirl...so cool.

We also just installed a chandelier that I think is too low, so I'll be replacing it soon. Or should I say Sean will be replacing it soon, as he is our resident electrician?

Someday I will have an upholstered headboard and quarter rounds on the floor (we need to add them everywhere upstairs still), but for Phase One, I'm pretty happy with it! So is our kitty Baylor, who loves to snuggle up next to the window.